“Soros Plan” national consultation to begin in October, costs unknown

The National Consultation on what the Fidesz government is calling the “Soros plan” will likely be held in October, according to statements made on state radio by government undersecretary of communications Bence Tuzson, reports mno.hu.

In the radio interview, Tuzson repeated many of the central themes from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Monday speech opening the autumn semester of Parliament: immigrant countries versus non-immigrant countries, and “mixed population” countries forcing their values on other, ethnically homogeneous countries such as Hungary.

Based on statements from government officials who have used the term “Soros plan,” it can be inferred that the vaguely-defined plan ascribed to Hungarian-American financier and philanthropist George Soros essentially outlines a scheme to force Hungary and other Central European countries to accept the forced resettlement of a large number of illegal immigrants. While no concrete evidence for the existence of such a plan has been provided by Fidesz, the party still considers the issue important enough to warrant the major expense of holding yet another National Consultation.

No government officials have given any figures to indicate how much the new consultation might cost, but television station Hír TV reported that a further HUF 5.6 billion (USD 21.7 million) has already been allotted to government media campaigns through the beginning of December. This could include the mailing out of millions of questionnaires for the National Consultation, as well as advertising campaigns in government-tied media promoting participation in the survey.

When asked whether the National Consultation could really be considered national, since it is only favored and initiated by the governing Fidesz-KDNP coailtion, Fidesz’s newly-appointed delegation leader Gergely Gulyás told Hir TV: “The government performs the National Consultation. Whether someone likes the name or not, naturally everyone is entitled to their political opinion, but it’s certain that Fidesz will take part at most by encouraging everyone to fill out the National Consultation questionnaires. Beyond that we have nothing to do with it.”

Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) president Gyula Molnár told Hir TV: “We’d really like to be able to see this Soros plan, if there’s already a consultation about it…but it’s clear that Fidesz is doing nothing more than updating its elections data base. The consultation is about nothing more than that.”

The previous “Let’s Stop Brussels!” National Consultation, which the government touted as “the most successful of all time,” was initially projected to cost less than HUF 1 billion but ballooned to nearly HUF 2.5 billion (USD 9.7 million) in the middle of the campaign.